How to Make Money before You Have Products to Sell
If you’ve decided that you want to work from home running your own business, you may need to have a form of income while you finish creating products and developing your business infrastructure. There are a number of ways in which you can bring in some income while you get your business off the ground.
- Provide a Service – If you plan to make your own products and sell them, you likely have skills that other people will want to use. Try finding out if anyone needs the types of service you could offer. Perhaps you’re good at graphic design, database management, transcription, or something else entirely. Put it out there and people may buy your time.
- Get a Part-Time Job – If you can’t wait for services to take off, you can get a part-time job. Sign up to be a substitute teacher or a temp at an agency, or head over to your nearest fast food place and you’re likely to be hired on the spot.
- Get a Work-at-Home Job – There are also work-from-home jobs that you can get pretty quickly if you have experience, education and skills. Look for call center work, and you could be bringing in money within the month.
- Sell Stuff on eBay – Have too much stuff in your house? Try selling some of it of it on eBay. You can also buy from stores on sale, and then sell for a higher price on eBay. Believe it or not, everyone isn’t able to get to the same sales you can.
- Sell Stuff on Amazon – Sort of the same idea as eBay, but you may not be aware that you can sell your old books and pretty much any items that Amazon sells, right from your home office. You can even ship some qualifying items to their fulfillment service and you then just collect checks. Look up “fulfillment by Amazon”.
- Have a Yard Sale – One of the fastest and most tried and true methods of bringing in a little cash is the old-fashioned yard or garage sale. You can still do that, and if the weather is not right, look on Facebook for groups dedicated to online yard sales in your area to make quick cash.
- Sell Your Body – Seriously, you can sell your blood, plasma and hair to appropriate locations. With blood and plasma you can walk right in, answer a few questions, give and get paid on the spot. With hair, you may have to locate a hair broker, or try selling it on eBay.
- Babysit or Dog Sit – One of the fastest ways to make a buck is to babysit or dog sit, but make sure you do it in their house or you’ll have to worry about licensure. Tell everyone you know that you’d like to babysit or provide animal care or both in their home, and your fee. You’ll be amazed at how many will jump at the chance.
- Return Stuff You Don’t Use – Have you made recent purchases and the tags are still on them? Do you have the receipts? Typically you can take those items back for a full refund. If you’re not using them right now, why not take them back. Most of us have far more stuff than we need anyway.
- Rent Out a Room – Do you have an extra room or two in your home? You’ll get more money if you rent out the master bedroom offering the renter their own bathroom. In some places you can earn close to a grand a month offering something like this.
- Join a Medical Experiment – Human trials and studies are often conducted right in your area at your local hospital. You can usually find out which studies are being done with a quick search on the net. You’ll be paid for your time, and get free healthcare for the associated issue.
There are always ways to get cash when you need it while you get your business off the ground. It just requires you to set your mind to looking around at what is out there, and thinking of things in a whole new way.